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Charles

One of the ways in which an upcoming IT company can grow its business is by creating HR solutions for the aviation industry. It is a potentially lucrative business, and one that can grow the company’s profile in a huge way. Once you have such jobs in your portfolio, it is a huge boost to your company’s resume. And, due to the lucrative nature of this sort of venture, it can improve your company’s bottom-line considerably. Sometimes, you find that you only need to work on one such contract, and you get enough revenue to last you for the entire year.

Getting the contracts

Admittedly, it may not be very easy to get the contracts if yours is an upcoming IT company. The aviation industry seems to prefer to work with well established IT companies. It is therefore not always easy for upcoming enterprises to get the contracts to develop HR solutions for the aviation industry. All contracts seem to go to the ‘established’ IT players. But then (thankfully), we often have the cases where such established IT companies sub-contract their work to upcoming enterprises. So you may, at the very least, get an opportunity to work on one such sub-contract. Or you may be even luckier to come across a newly set up aviation company, which is looking for HR solutions at low rates. Such a company may be willing to give you a chance: notwithstanding the fact that yours is not a very well established IT company.

Sometimes, the aviation companies invite interested IT companies to bid for the contracts to supply the HR solutions. So you can take advantage of such invitations to bid, and you may be just lucky to be the one who clinches the contracts.

There is the other option of approaching the aviation companies directly with a proposal to offer them the HR solutions. You never know — they may buy the proposals, if what you are proposing is just what they were looking for.

It can also be a good idea to network with the people who run the aviation industry, and generally try to be on good terms with them. They would then be in a position to alert you when need for software solutions (like the HR solutions in question here) arises. Then you can go ahead to take advantage of such opportunities.

The scope of the aviation industry

It is important to point out that the aviation industry is broad. So when we make references to ‘creating HR solutions for the aviation industry’ we are not just referring to the airlines. There are, for instance, companies whose main line of business is that of supplying fuel to the aviation industry. Those are regarded as part of the aviation industry. There are others that are involved in repair of aircraft. Those, as well, are regarded as part of the aviation industry. Then we have others still that are involved in the supply or aircraft spare parts, or in marketing/advertising airlines – and all those are still considered to be part of the aviation industry. So the point we are trying to make here is that there are very many types of players in the aviation industry. It is a broad industry.

Therefore, if you want to start developing HR solutions for the aviation industry, you need to broaden your perspective. Don’t limit yourself to the airlines. Yes, it may be hard for you to get contracts from the airlines at the outset, if yours is a newly established IT company. But you can start by developing HR solutions for the other peripheral players in the industry. Your profile would grow with time — to a point where you would eventually start getting contracts from the main players, including the airlines.

Types of HR solutions you can create for the aviation industry

There are many types of HR solutions that you can create for the aviation industry. In this article, we will be looking at five key ones,namely:

Clocking solutions: it is usually necessary to track when employees report to work and when they leave the workplace. This is best done through clocking software. So one of the HR solutions you can offer to the aviation industry (and which companies in the aviation industry have great demand for) is that of clocking software.

Payroll solutions: making calculations for employee remuneration is not always easy. The hours worked and hourly rates have to be taken into considerations. Those alongside any applicable bonuses. Then the applicable deductions have to be considered… It can be very hard to keep track of all these manually. That makes it necessary for software to be used. And this means that one of the HR solutions you can offer to the aviation industry is that of payroll software.

Benefits administration solutions: like all other types of employees, people who work in the aviation industry are entitled to certain benefits. These include medical benefits, employee insurance and retirement benefits, among others. It can be very hard to keep track of these manually: hence the need for software. This is therefore yet another area where you can offer HR solutions to the aviation industry.

Workforce planning solutions: in an industry as complex as the aviation industry, it can be very hard to figure out how many employees are required at various times of the day for the various roles. If you are dealing with hundreds (or even thousands) of employees, spread in different parts of the world, and you are trying to do it manually, it becomes an arduous – nearly impossible — task. This makes it necessary for software to be used, and this therefore is yet another HR solution you can offer to the aviation industry.

Appraisal solutions: as with all other industries, the companies in the aviation industry always endeavor to gauge their employees’ productivity. So this is what necessitates employee appraisal. And whereas the appraisal can be done manually, it is a difficult task if you are dealing with hundreds or thousands of employees. To make the task easier, it becomes necessary to use software – hence the need for employee appraisal solutions.

Integrated HR solutions

One of the options available to you, when creating HR solutions for the aviation industry, is that of having different stand-alone software applications for different purposes. So you can have one application for clocking purposes,another application for payroll processing, yet another one for benefits administration…and so on. The other option is that of having integrated solutions. So this is where you have a single application that is has capabilities for clocking, payroll processing, benefits administration… and so on. You therefore need to be in a position to offer both the stand-alone and the integrated HR solutions for the aviation industry.

The success of any company in the aviation industry depends, to a great extent, on how well the employees are managed. This means that the task of hiring HR managers is one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Every effort needs to be made, to ensure that the individuals who are hired are of the right caliber. The worst mistake you can make, as a player in the aviation industry, is to hire mediocre individuals to work as HR managers. That mistake can, soon or later, lead to drastic falls in profitability: due to lack of motivation on the part of the employees. In the fullness of time, it can actually lead to total failure of the aviation company in question. Indeed, we have seen many aviation companies failing, and a good number of them fail due to improper management of employees. For when employees are improperly managed, they get demoralized. They start serving customers badly (and sometimes engaging in outright sabotage). The customers in turn start avoiding the airline in question. Then, due to fewer customers, the airline starts having revenue problems — ultimately leading to failure. Yet this would have been avoided if proper care had been taken while hiring the HR managers.

Now if you want to get it right when it comes to hiring HR managers for the aviation industry, you need to:

Advertise the job openings properly

The idea here is to have as many (relevant) people as possible to know that you are hiring. This would broaden the potential talent pool from which you would be recruiting. And that would in turn increase the chances of you getting managers of the right caliber. It is a game of numbers, really. Thus if you have a narrow pool to recruit from, you may not be able to get the right caliber of managers. So you first of all need to create a profile of the sort of person who would be an ideal manager for your aviation company. Then you need to figure out where you can place your job ads, to increase the odds of the job ads being seen by the people who meet that profile. Then you can proceed to do so.

Remember, there are instances where you may need to scout the international labor market, to further enhance your chances of finding the right candidate. If you can’t find the right candidate locally, there is absolutely no reason as to why you shouldn’t go to the international labor market — especially if yours is a major aviation company.

Consider the applicants’ qualifications

It is important to ensure that the people who are hired to work as managers in the aviation industry have the right educational and professional qualifications. So you definitely need to look at the applicants’ papers. You may then need to counter-check with the schools that the applicants claim to have attended, to be certain that you are dealing with genuine qualifications.

Consider the applicants’ interests

The ideal people, in this regard, would be those who have always had a desire to work within the aviation industry. You also need to be sure that the folks you are dealing with are individuals who have a passion for HR management. Those would, ideally, be folks for whom HR management is something of a vocation, a calling: not just something they do to earn a paycheck.

Consider the applicants’ personalities

The ideal people to work as HR managers in the aviation industry (or any other industry for that matter) would be those who have pleasant but firm personalities. If you hire someone with an unpleasant personality to work as a manager in the aviation industry, chances are that they would soon or later start having run-ins with the staff. And that would almost certainly demoralize the staff — which, as we noted earlier, is likely to have an impact on the company’s bottom-line.

Carry out objective interviews

The best approach here is to have a system where you award the (HR management job) applicants points, depending on certain objective criterion. For instance,you can award a maximum of 10 points for educational qualifications, another 10 points for professional qualifications, 10 points for personality, 10 points for interests… and so on. Then, a certain candidate may get 7 out of the possible 10 points for educational qualifications, 5 out of the possible 10 points for professional qualifications, 8 out of 10 for personality… and so on. Then you repeat the process, objectively, for each of the candidate who goes through the interview. And at the end of the exercise, you select the candidate with the highest number of points to work as the HR manager.

If you allow yourself to be influenced by subjective considerations, you may end up hiring less than ideal people.

Consider tapping internal talent

There are cases where you may be better off tapping internal talent, rather than advertising the job externally. The good thing with an internal candidate would be in familiarity. You see, this would be a person who is already conversant with how stuff is done within your company (and this, in some cases, can be a positive thing). So, for instance, if the former HR manager has left for another company, you can hire the person who was working as his assistant. This is a good idea if what you are looking for is continuity. Like if the HR management function has been successful so far, and you want it to continue being that way, you can just promote one of the people who are already working there.

Consider headhunting

There are cases where, rather than advertising the HR management job, you can opt to head-hunt. So you approach someone who is working in another company’s HR department, and try to persuade him to join yours. For instance, you may have seen another aviation company whose HR function is very well managed, and you want yours to be similarly well run. So you opt to headhunt one of the people who are in charge of HR at that other company.

There are, of course, people who may have concerns about the ethics of head-hunting. But when all is said and done,as long as the person who is being head-hunted isn’t being forced to join the new company, there should be no problems. In any event, you may not have to head-hunt the top HR person at the other company. Instead, you may approach one of the junior individuals (but one who is well conversant with HR operations at that other company), and try to get him to join yours.